


what about me and all my friends; are we all sinners if we sin?

by pdoesart (elphie_jolras)



Series: they're talking about war on the radio [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Anders is everyone's doctor, Anders still runs a clinic, Aveline is like the one cop who isn't corrupt, F/M, Fenris got acquitted of murder charges, Gen, Hell's Kitchen has too many vigilantes, Isabela also runs a cafe, Merrill is the unpaid intern, Pre-Relationship, Sebastian is actually Father Sebastian, Sebastian works at St Agnes' Orphanage, Varric and Hawke are lawyers, everyone is a vigilante, except for Aveline and Anders, it's a daredevil AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 02:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7489881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elphie_jolras/pseuds/pdoesart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders really wishes that the various vigilantes of Hell's Kitchen would end up somewhere other than his dumpster.</p><p>OR</p><p>The Daredevil AU that nobody asked for</p>
            </blockquote>





	what about me and all my friends; are we all sinners if we sin?

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching Daredevil earlier and I thought: "Man. What if the DA2 crew were vigilantes in Hell's Kitchen?"
> 
> So of course Anders would be like Claire, I decided, and everything else fell into place.

It’s been a long day at the clinic, and the last thing Anders wants to do is patch up another patient that got themselves hurt in the pit known as Hell’s Kitchen.  In fact, he’s looking forward to collapsing on his couch and sleeping for about four hours when somebody knocks on his door – _hard_.

Bleary-eyed, he opens the door and comes face to face with the young girl who lives upstairs.  She grabs his wrist in thin fingers and tugs him out the door, speaking to him in panicked Spanish – he’s only catching snippets of what she’s saying.  Something about the dumpster and… a woman?

“Nina, slow down,” he says in Spanish, then, “There’s a woman in the dumpster?”

Nina nods, tugging him further along.  “Hurry!” she says.  The girl – how old is she again, twelve? – leads him into the alley beside their apartment building.  “I was taking out the trash for grandma,” she babbles, “And she was just _in_ there!”

“Go back to _Abuela_ ,” Anders says in English.  When she hesitates, he repeats the statement in Spanish, and Nina runs off.  He’s left alone with the girl in the dumpster.

The girl is pale, though whether that’s natural or because of the various wounds she’s bleeding from, he has no idea.  There’s blood in her dark hair and a mask on her face that slips out of place as he fishes her out of the dumpster and carries her, bridal style, up the five flights of stairs to his apartment.  She has what looks like a stab wound in her side and a bullet wound in her arm, and a cut on her scalp that has left her soft hair matted with dried blood.

 _Shit_.  He’s got his work cut out for him.  Anders fishes for his kit – too bad he can’t risk taking her to the clinic in this state, because he doesn’t have many painkillers left, and he’s definitely going to have to stitch up the wound in her side.

He’s just gotten everything out when she wakes up with a gasp, sitting up and crying out in pain.  Frantic blue eyes meet his, and the mystery woman bares her teeth at him.

“Where am I?” she demands, “Who are you?”

Anders puts his hands up – “I’m a doctor,” he reassures her, “You’re in my apartment – I fished you out of a _dumpster_ which, by the way, is not how I usually come across pretty women.”

The girl – she’s only in her mid-twenties, he realizes, which is a good decade younger than him – lets out a huff of a laugh and then groans, her hand flying to her side.  “Well, I don’t usually lie around in dumpsters waiting for handsome strangers to fish me out.”  She tilts her head to look at him, her blue eyes bright.  “You haven’t tried to call the hospital yet?”

He shrugs.  “I probably should, but based on the mask you were wearing, that would be bad for everyone involved.”

The girl chokes out a laugh.  “That’s an understatement.”

“Your side’ll need stitches,” he tells her, “I have pain meds, just let me grab a glass of water – ”

A hand on his arm stops him.  “Not necessary,” says the girl, then, “Do you have any scotch?”

He does, in fact, have a bottle of scotch that Karl bought him before Karl ended up with brain damage because of one of the many gangs in Hell’s Kitchen.  He pulls it out of his pathetically under-stocked liquor cabinet and hands it over to her half-heartedly.  She should really be taking painkillers, but he suspects that he won’t be able to convince her to do a single thing she doesn’t want to.

“So,” he begins as he begins the stitches, “Can I ask who did this to you?”

The woman winces as the needle slides into her flesh and snorts in response to his question.  “Carta,” she tells him flatly. “They took a girl – young.  For their fucking human trafficking ring.”

There’s an angry fire in those bright blue eyes, even though she must be in incredible pain from the stitches and whatever wounds she has that he can’t see.  “Let me guess,” he says drily, “it was a trap for you.”

“Yeah,” she admits, then, “I took most of the ambush party with me, though.”

Anders sends a pointed look at what she’s wearing – a dark blue shirt and skinny jeans.  “Get some armor and maybe you wouldn’t end up with a stab wound.”

She laughs, and her eyes light up.  “Even vigilantes have to pay rent, doc.”

“I’m Anders,” he says.  She smiles.

“Nice to meet you, Anders.  I’m Mare.”

-0-0-

After his first meeting with Mare, which ends with her dropping a fake police officer off the roof of his building into the dumpster she’d recently occupied, he learns more about her.  She has superpowers because of _course_ she does; some sort of weird super senses that let her hear and smell better than any human should.  The rest of Hell’s Kitchen knows her as _el diablo_ , which doesn’t seem like a fitting name for the good-humored woman who he stitched up that night.  She saves the girl and he only knows this because she shows up at his door nursing another knife wound but this time she’s conscious and also smiling triumphantly.

He finds out her secret identity when he reads an article about some guy who was charged with murder but got acquitted because of some new law firm called _Tethras & Hawke_, and the picture of the lawyers showcases a short blonde man and a tall willowy woman that he instantly recognizes as Mare.

Next time she shows up, he asks her if she can defend the clinic in court, because Meredith (who has her priorities completely fucked up, honestly, how can she say that the poor don’t deserve care) wants to shut them down, and Marian only looks vaguely surprised before telling him to come to the office the next day.

( She wins him the case and that’s the first time he thinks that maybe he’s ready to move on from Karl, because there’s something beautiful about the way she rips through the opposition with that fire in her blue eyes.  Is it wrong to make out with your lawyer?  Because he wants to make out with her. )

And then suddenly he apparently has this reputation among the vigilante community (if that’s a thing) as _the healer_ , which he’ll admit has a nice ring to it.  But taking care of Mare when she staggers in injured is one thing – it’s another when she climbs in his window with a masked man slung over her shoulder.

“Wait,” says Anders as Mare drops the man on his couch, “Is that your _partner_?  You’re _both_ vigilantes?”

Mare shrugs, and she’s purposefully avoiding an answer.  “He got shot,” she says, “In the thigh.”

Anders groans, but he patches up the masked man who is _very obviously_ Varric Tethras.  This is proven when his patient wakes up for a moment, mutters “thanks, Blondie,” and passes out again.  _Blondie_ doesn’t even make sense – Varric’s just as blonde as he is.

“Are you _all_ vigilantes?” he asks sharply, placing his hands on his hips and glaring at Mare.  “Like, is your entire law firm made up of people who just go out after dark to beat up criminals?”

“No,” Mare says defensively, then, “Fenris isn’t a vigilante.  I don’t think.  And Merrill _definitely_ isn’t.”

-0-0-

Fenris is a vigilante.

Anders knows this because – and this doesn’t come as a surprise – the man ends up in his dumpster one Friday night.  He’s taking the trash out when he hears the groaning from the dumpster – for a minute he thinks it’s Hawke again, but instead it’s the former murder suspect.

“No rest for the wicked,” Anders grumbles, and drags the man into the finicky single elevator so that he isn’t dragging a vigilante up five flights of stairs.  Fenris becomes lucid only once they’re in Anders’ apartment, at which point Anders decides he has the right to sass any and all vigilantes who end up his couch.

“You’re lucky you lot always end up in _my_ dumpster,” Anders says as he shines a light into Fenris’ eyes, ignoring the swear words bursting forth from the other man’s throat, “Anywhere else and you’d all be dead by now.”

Fenris grumbles something that sounds a lot like _put a needle in me and I’ll rip your heart out of your chest_.  Anders should know; he’s dealt with enough angry half-conscious patients to understand the particular dialect of slurred English they can manage.

“Oh please,” Anders scoffs, “You’re miniature.”

More angry grumbling – fine.  These vigilantes never want painkillers?  That’s their deal.  He doesn’t want to piss them off.

“Well, your shoulder is dislocated, so if one of the neighbors call the cops because you’re screaming, you can’t blame me.”

Fenris doesn’t scream, and doesn’t speak until Anders has finished with him.

“Who are you?” Fenris asks.

“The healer,” he says, “What about you?”

“Nobody’s given me a name yet,” Fenris tells him, “But you know who I am.”

“I do,” Anders says.

“You can’t tell Hawke about this,” Fenris says.  Anders agrees, because he’s a doctor and he holds patient confidentiality in the highest esteem.  That’s also why he doesn’t tell Fenris that Marian is a vigilante too.

\--

Eventually, Anders has to keep a hidden binder stashed in the back of his closet just so that he can keep track of every vigilante that comes to him, whether it’s through the door or the window or via dumpster.  He learns that Mare doesn’t like painkillers because she has a ridiculous amount of allergies.  He learns (after she comes swinging through his open window one night) that Spider-Woman is actually the owner of the café down the road.  He knows that the sweet, naïve intern who Marian likes to talk about during their weekly lunch meetings is actually Elektra – who is known for treading an even thinner good-evil line than most vigilantes.

And then there’s the man who goes by Apollo.  It takes Anders a week to puzzle out who the archer is ( _why_ are there so many archers in this city?  Varric – _Bowman_ – and now this guy) but eventually he does when he’s escorting a girl with a broken leg back to her mother from the clinic, and they pass by the local church.  Apollo is _Father Sebsatian_.

Anders almost can’t help the noise of surprise that escapes his mouth when he recognizes the priest; even though he’s only ever seen the man in gleaming white armor with and a black undershirt, he’d recognize that strong nose and those bright blue eyes anywhere.

Apollo – Sebastian – whatever – doesn’t seem to recognize them, though whether that’s genuine or merely the product of fantastic acting is anyone’s guess.

Suddenly, it hits Anders that he’s holding the secret identity of a majority of the city’s vigilantes (or at least the neighborhood’s – he knows Hell’s Kitchen sucks but does it _really_ need six different vigilantes?) in his hands.  It’s a scary notion.

Then he meets Aveline, and suddenly he doesn’t feel like the odd man out.  Aveline is the chief of the local precinct, and she’s one of the only cops that Anders has ever liked.  Go figure.

Aveline joins the weekly lunchtime chats with Marian and him, offering a steady presence that offsets the constant humor of the two of them.

“I swear,” Anders says the night after Varric shows up at his apartment for the fourth time in the week, “If one more bitch-ass white boy comes barreling through my window, I’m becoming a supervillain.”

“Hate to break it to you, but _you’re_ a bitch-ass white boy,” Aveline says drily, idly stirring her iced tea.  Marian stifles a laugh, and Anders frowns sourly even as he tries not to chuckle.

“Maybe so,” he acquiesces, “But this bitch-ass white boy is the reason _el diablo_ and company are still alive.”

Marian hums in agreement: “Doc has a point there.”

\--

Anders is stretched to the breaking point when _all six_ of the neighborhood vigilantes end up at his apartment at the same time.  Not that they arrive simultaneously, or anything, but they all end up in his living room together.  He kind of wants to scream because having six vigilantes who all know each other but don’t know that they’re all vigilantes is the biggest kind of mess, and Fenris is yelling at Mare for putting herself in danger, and Merrill-slash-Elektra is sharply countering every argument Varric is giving as to why she shouldn’t be fighting bad guys, and Isabela is cackling because even _she_ recognizes Father Sebastian.

Anders is stitching up _another_ of Hawke’s stab wounds – in the arm, this time, like that makes it any better – but she’s still arguing with Fenris and she keeps moving and _for christ’s sake he’s going to scream_.

“Everybody shut up!” he yells finally, which surprisingly manages to shut everybody up.  He takes a deep breath, sending a glare to everyone in the room in turn.  “This is a no-argument zone,” he declares, “And if the lot of you want medical help, you’ll have to keep quiet and _wait your turn_.  Else you can go take your chances with some back-alley surgeon.”

Everyone stares at him in stunned silence, Marian included, and when he turns back to her wound she tilts her head forward to whisper in his ear:

“That was _hot_.”

He blushes bright red, and Fenris makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat.

Anders makes his way through injury after injury, and watches them leave one by one until only Mare is left.

“You’re a lifesaver, you know that?” she asks, leaning against him.  He grins at her.

“I do my best.”

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for the bitch-ass white boy banter came from here:
> 
> http://invisibleinnocence.tumblr.com/post/145698295371


End file.
